Clujul Medical - Iuliu Haţieganu

POLYSEROSITIS AND MULTISYSTEMIC
DYSFUNCTION IN A CASE OF UNCLASSIFICABLE
CONNECTIVE TISSUE DISEASE. UNDIFFERENTIATED
VERSUS OVELAPPING (MIXED) SYNDROME ?
(A CASE REPORT AND REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE)
D. RĂDULESCU 1 , F. CIOVICESCU 1 , S. PRIPON 3 , C. DUNCEA 1 ,
ELENA BUZDUGAN 1 , ANCA CRISTEA 2
1Clinica Medicală V, UMF “Iuliu Hatieganu”, Cluj-Napoca.
2 Clinica Medicală I, Laboratorul de Imunologie, Cluj-Napoca.
3 student anul V , UMF “Iuliu Hatieganu”, Cluj-Napoca.
Summary
The existence of patients with signs, symptoms and certain laboratory test
results suggestive of a systemic autoimmune disease but not fulfilling the classification
criteria for well-defined connective-tissue diseases (CTDs) is a more and more common
experience in clinical practice. The first description of these clinical entities dates back
to 1980, when LeRoy proposed the term “Undifferentiated Connective Tissue
Syndromes” (UCTS) to define the early stages of connective-tissue diseases that are
undefined, unclassifiable or perhaps incomplete, as opposed to mixed or overlapping
syndromes in which patients exhibit enough features of more than one connective tissue
disease to meet the diagnosis for several at the same time.
In this article we present the case of a 53 year old female admitted to Medicala
V Hospital with a diagnosis of undifferentiated connective tissue disease, documented
on clinical and laboratory data.
Key words: undifferentiated connective tissue disease, connective tissue
disease
Introduction
The existence of patients with signs, symptoms and certain lab test results
suggestive of a systemic autoimmune disease but not fulfilling the classification criteria
for well-defined connective-tissue diseases (CTDs) is a more and more common
experience in clinical practice. The first description on these clinical entities dates back
to 1980, when LeRoy proposed the term “Undifferentiated Connective Tissue
Syndromes” (UCTS) to define the early stages of connective-tissue diseases that are
undefined, unclassifiable or perhaps incomplete, as opposed to mixed or overlapping
syndromes in which patients exhibit enough features of more than one connective tissue
disease to meet the diagnosis for several at the same time. Thus, they “overlap” two or
more diseases. That’s because many CTDs share common signs and symptoms which
frequently makes the diagnosis difficult. The definition of UCTS and overlap
syndromes is still under debate.
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